Unfortunately, your access has now expired. But there’s good news—by subscribing today, you will receive 22 issues of Booklist magazine, 4 issues of Book Links, and single-login access to Booklist Online and over 180,000 reviews.

Your access to Booklist Online has expired. If you still subscribe to the print magazine, please proceed to your profile page and check your subscriber number against a current magazine mailing label. (If your print subscription has lapsed, you will need to renew.)

Althea & Oliver.

Moracho, Cristina (author).

Althea and Oliver have been neighbors and best friends since age 6. Now 17, their closeness has developed an expectation of which Althea is too aware, while Oliver seems willfully oblivious. Temperamental, unsociable Althea is afraid that she’s the one who needs Oliver more, while affable Oliver wishes everything would stay the same. Compounding Althea’s insecurity is Oliver’s unusual narcoleptic-like condition, which causes him to fall deeply asleep without warning, for weeks or even months, leaving Althea painfully waiting for his return. After an awkward first kiss, an agonizing loss of virginity, and a messy break with Althea, Oliver goes to New York for a medical study. Althea follows, believing it to be her last chance to save their relationship. Though Oliver’s condition acts as a plot device—it’s the catalyst for both characters—it’s presented with believable sincerity. Set in the 1990s, Moracho’s coming-of-age story carries rare insight and a keen understanding of those verging on adulthood: fierce emotions and crippling insecurity mixed with a heady sense of limitless possibility. Or, as Althea puts it to her father while defending her questionable choices, “Sweaty, queasy, weirdly euphoric.” Suggest this pitch-perfect debut to readers looking for an older, edgier read-alike to Rainbow Rowell’s Eleanor & Park(2013). Krista Hutley